Ritual
by Bogglocity
Summary: Confections and conversation have long since turned into greater comforts, and there is little place else that Christine would rather be. Charoga, one-shot, M rating


**A/N: Re-upload after the format got all messed up. Want to say that this was, as a lot of things I post are, completely self-indulgent, and I'm a little nervous sharing this. A publishing first for me. Hope you enjoy.**

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The soft scents of steaming tea and spiced cologne have become a source of deep, abiding comfort for Christine over these months. They fill her lungs first, then the whole of her chest, down to her belly and into her fingers and toes each time she enters the humble little flat on the Rue de Rivoli. The sense of security is only strengthened by the low, rumbling voice that greets her each time she comes with her offerings—fruit on some days, cheeses on others, macarons when she craves the sight of those crow's-feet wrinkles at the corners of those jade eyes. Nadir is especially generous with his smiles on those days.

And it is in that bubble of gas-lit comfort that they speak. Of everything, of nothing. The opera, the weather, what they've read recently—an exchange for no other reason than to hear the other speak between the moments of hazy silence, an excuse more than a necessity. She does so love his voice, with its lulling timbre and its accented lilt. She wonders often if he finds her own accent as charming as she does his.

The macarons slowly but surely disappear as the day stretches on into the night, and still she doesn't leave.

Christine was surprised, the first night she realized she wanted to stay. It came as a sudden and stark revelation of something that had been building steadily just in front of her eyes, like the moment in the summers when one fully realizes that the leaves have grown into their lush splendour over the spring. It had, after all, simply begun as small gifts and doorway conversations before she moved along. A polite friendship built on a firm respect—he for her strength, she for his kindness—but they soon lingered longer in that doorway, she soon began to take him up on his invitations inside. It only ever occurred to her in passing that they made for an odd set of companions—the Persian and the Swede.

It made sense, in a way. They were _others_ , after all, brought together by a strange and inexplicable set of circumstances.

Even so, it surprised her a great deal, and she had found herself staring across the coffee table at Nadir with widened eyes and parted lips while just in the middle of what was meant to be a question on a story he was telling. She had found herself quite suddenly admiring the bronze shine of his skin, the dignified grey of his sideburns, the halfway confused upturn of the corner of his shapely lips. The smile had disappeared when she stood a little too quickly and he mirrored the action, brow furrowed and arms out as though prepared to help her but unsure how or why. It turned into his own surprise as she stepped around the table and her hands lifted to either side of his face, and he looked down into the determined blue of her eyes with blinking awe.

It all melted away into a sigh as she lifted herself up on the tips of her toes to press her lips to his.

The surprise is gone now, replaced by the vanity he bought for her, by the hairbrush and pins and changes of clothing that she leaves. Her retiring early to his bedroom is routine now, even Darius now accustomed to the new system—he had, at first, made a point of turning away in an effort to retain some modicum of discretion. Now, he wishes her goodnight with a smooth bow of the head.

Nadir doesn't always join her right away, but he never takes long, and tonight is no exception. She just sheds her layers down to her underthings when she hears the door open and close behind her. She doesn't bother to turn because soon, broad hands are palming at the juncture between hips and waist.

They don't bother to speak as he first smooths down along her hips, then back up again, bunching her chemise upward to reveal more of her thighs. The fluttering of soft lips against her pulse pulls a sigh from her throat and she allows herself to lean back against the solidity of him. A breath spreads in tendrils from beneath her ear, a half-sigh of his own as those same hands take to a gentle rove.

He isn't a shy man. He has had his years of experience. But those years have mellowed him from the harried hunger that is present in men of Christine's age. They have taught him the value of savouring rather than consuming, of feeling and being felt rather than simply touching. That is why, when he makes it to the lacy trim of her chemise, he rolls the thin fabric between his fingers, tracing lower down so that he just barely touches her bare thigh with the pad of one of them. The contact sends a warm shiver spreading across her skin in goosebumps.

"May I?" he whispers against the shell of her ear and she nods, eyes closed. In a lazy motion, he brings the chemise over her head, baring her from the waist up as he drops the cream garment to the floor in a flit of linen.

She decides that it is his turn now, and so she turns before his hands can find her bare skin properly. A placid fondness stares down at her from half-lidded eyes as she works at the buttons of his waistcoat, trying in a laughable futility to maintain their eye contact as she does. He helps her pull it away as he backs her toward the bed with careful steps, and the process begins anew with his shirt until it too is opened. He shrugs it off, letting it join the rest of the discarded articles that now litter the floor.

She presses her hand to the center of his chest—her favourite part of their ritual. How small and dainty her hand looks against that broad chest, how pale white her skin against his warm terracotta. He must enjoy their contrast just as well as she does, because his own finds the side of her neck, thumb sweeping along the line of her jaw before he cups her cheek. His touch has all the care of a man afraid to wrinkle the pages of some priceless tome, wary to not hurt the binding. She rests her head in his hand, turning to kiss the inside of his wrist.

They shed the rest of their barriers with reverence, fingers ghosting along sensitive places—the side of her ribs, the smooth hair of his pectorals, the crux between her backside and the back of her thighs. Soon, there is nothing between them save air, and when thick arms lift her with ease onto the silks of his canopied bed, even that disappears.

His lips are warm as they slant against hers, sweeping in a rhythmic exchange of heat and moisture. He still tastes of confections, of the tea used to wash them down, and she begs silently for more of it with fingers tangled into pepper-black hair. He obliges with no protest, lifting her hips once more to push her further back against the pillows, climbing in fully after her. The weight that he allows himself to settle onto her is grounding and she breathes another sigh against his mouth.

When he pulls his mouth from hers, she almost whines a protest, fingers raking gently against his scalp, but he silences the encroaching complaint with a kiss along her jaw instead. Then another, nuzzling her head to the side that he might have further access. She gives it readily with a shivering hum, unable to stop her lips parting when he applies the most barely-there suction beneath her ear. Her toes curl and tingle at the tracing of his nose along the shell of it, at the grazing of his teeth on her earlobe.

When his travels make it down to her neck, he pauses. Another nuzzle, this time into the depths of her blond tresses as he takes a deep lungful of air. When he lets it out, it carries with it words from his homeland. She doesn't understand them, but she _feels_ them, feels the endearments laced in each syllable.

She returns them with her own in Swedish, willing him to feel the same before he continues his meandering path downward.

Her neck, the dip beneath her throat, her collarbone, further downward as his beard tickles against sensitive skin. Down, lips brushing on the downy smoothness of her breasts, pulling a whimper from her when he laves a feverishly hot tongue along the slope of one, taking her nipple into his mouth to tease it for a single tantalizing second before his sojourn continues along. Down, along gently-curving planes until he reaches her navel.

More quiet words in Farsi and she smiles. She has asked him to teach her, and he has. Words here and there, simple phrases, though her pronunciation often has him chuckling. She teases him back when his tongue stumbles in Swedish, but neither of them mind—even had they no shared language between them, they would still speak, and they would still understand.

Further down and he rests his head against a pillowy thigh, kneading the tender flesh of the other with a scarred and roughened hand. They are the hands of a man who has had a storied life—hands that have been burnt by hot sands, hands with knuckles that have cracked in brawls, hands that have diverted knives and pistols just in time. And now, they caress the length of her legs, that roughness welcomed because it belongs to him.

Her back arches with a gasp when he spreads her thighs just a little further, when his tongue dips between her legs, and her hand twists into his hair, bidden by the shock of heat that courses through her. He hums, inaudible and undetectable save for the vibrations that travel up to her neck and down again, before he begins in earnest.

It is as it always is—an exploration, as though he hasn't already mapped her with lips and tongue countless times before, as though it is that first chill early-spring night with its window closed to the cold and any passing ears that might hear her pleading whimpers. Gentle, almost teasing in how he just skirts that pressure that she seeks. He waits, keeps her on the very brink even as his eyes stay locked with hers, waiting for the trembling in her thighs and the panting of her breath to become too much before his pace quickens, before a thick, deceptively deft finger curls inside of her and he hums again, deeper now, just a little bit louder. She tips over the edge with curled toes, lights flashing behind her eyes and a gasp in the shape of his name.

His hand stays where it is, drawing her slowly down from her fall with shallow movements while she catches her breath, while he lays sucking kisses on her inner thighs, on the juncture of hip and pelvis, beneath her navel. He climbs the length of her body, and her own hand, still trembling in the wake of her climax, shifts to his cheek to comb through his beard. He utters a tangle between murmur and chuckle against her breast, kissing her sternum, but she hasn't the presence of mind to make it out as he settles there, ear to her chest.

She dearly hopes he hears her heartbeat.

It is when the heat begins to bloom again and the pressure of his fingers becomes firmer that her hips give a short jerk of their own accord, still achingly sensitive. She whispers his name, a hand on his shoulder to draw him upward and he obeys as he always does, falling easily to the kiss into which she pulls him. She needn't ask anymore—he has long since learned the cues, the inflections of his name and their meanings, the ways of drawing out what it is that she wants.

His hand pulls from her as she guides him effortlessly to his side, instead sliding along and down her waist to cup her backside when she lifts her thigh to his hip. She feels his length pressed to her now, hot against her lower abdomen, and perhaps unconsciously, he squeezes her, pulling her closer just as he sucks her bottom lip.

They move as though reading the other's thoughts, he to his back and she above him so that she straddles his hips. Palms flat to her skin, he runs his hands up and down the curve of her waist, up past her ribs, further to cup her breasts, the friction forcing her to close her eyes as a moan leaves her unbidden. When she opens them again, a curl of warmth winds through her ribcage at the sight of a pleased smile. Never smug nor triumphant, simply pleased, content and comfortable in her reactions.

The smile parts in his own breath as she reaches between them, fingertips just brushing the head of his length before she takes him properly into her hand. Hard and alive and when she lifts just enough to lower herself over him, she revels in the way he fills her, the way their bodies meld and interlock so perfectly that she couldn't possibly say where she ends and he begins.

They move together, their hips rising and rolling in unpunctuated ebbs and swells. His hands travel, hips and waist and back, lighting trails of fire with every inch gained while hers stay anchored to his chest. Through every weighted breath, every softly-spoken ' _Nadir_ ', every devoutly-whispered ' _Christine_ ', their eyes stay locked and she loses herself in that striking green, in the caress of fingers along the line of her spine, in the building and rebuilding pleasure that comes with every shift in angle. It isn't long before her fingernails are scratching in the hair of his chest, before his body tenses in shudders beneath her, before their pace begins to quicken in the hurrying chase toward their goal.

Release comes with a quick drive upward of his hips, her fists balling against his chest and a cracked, muted cry of his name escaping her throat. Arms wrap around her waist as tremors wrack her body, pulled flush to his chest, his pace stuttering but not ceasing as one hand grips into her hip, and in one, two more thrusts, he follows her into euphoria with a low, gravelly groan.

Hot air mingles between them as sweat-laced foreheads press together, and for a long moment, they stay like this, neither willing to be the first to break their contact. It is with a herculean effort on her part that she finally manages to shift away, to drift to her side beside him while he turns with her. Again her thigh is at his hip, but now she wraps an arm behind him to press to his shoulder blade, to close as much distance as possible between them. It is he who has the forethought to pull the coverlet over their chilling bodies before pulling her tight in his embrace.

The scent of black pepper and cinnamon fills her lungs as his whispered endearments drift to her ears and she smiles, body boneless as he pulls back to once more look into her eyes. She can see the smile in them, that sunlit summer warmth as inherent to him as his easy laugh.

When she recognizes a particular string of words, when she feels a thumb brush a semicircle along her lower back, she can't help the quiet laugh. Affection envelops her in eiderdown and she speaks it back, careful to tongue the syllables just right. The featherlight brush of lip to lip, that same smile against her mouth tells her that she has said it well enough for him.


End file.
